Mimic Raises an Army
Space Shifter Chronicles, Book 4
James David Victor
Fairfield Publishing
Copyright © 2017 Fairfield Publishing
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Contents
1. The Past Can Haunt You
2. Five’s a Party, Six is a Surprise
3. Good Things Come in Tall Packages
4. The Last Moments of Peace
5. The Home Tour
6. Close Only Counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades
7. Teaching New Dogs New Tricks
8. Walking the Walk
9. Somewhat Hostile Take Over
10. S.O.S. (Steal Our Ship)
11. Grand Theft Spaceship
12. The Flight Back Home is Always Shorter
13. Making the Leap
Thank You
1
The Past Can Haunt You
“Stop! I said stop!”
A haunting scream pulled me from my sleep, and I bolted upright so fast that my head spun. Rubbing my temples, I tried to get my bearings on my unusual surroundings.
Oh right, we were on the ship that we had stolen from Earth Gov. I still couldn’t believe that had happened, but the rumbling of the metal around me confirmed it.
I felt a slight movement beside me, and saw that Mimic had been lying next to me, sleek and shiny in her spikey, natural form just like the old times when we had first met. It was funny, I knew she technically didn’t need to rest the same way I did, but I appreciated her company nonetheless.
“STOP!” The scream sounded again, desperate and wretched, echoing through the empty halls like the wail of an ancient banshee. Finally, my brain sprung to life and the entire situation clicked.
“Gonzales!” I cried, stumbling out of bed.
I bolted towards the door, Mimic rousing and following without question. Thankfully, we all had chosen to sleep somewhat near each other, and I only had to go to the next officer’s cabin about halfway down the corridor to get to the weapons engineer’s room.
I burst in just as the coin twins were rounding the corner. Sure enough, Gonzales was tossing and turning on her bed, and I could smell both the sweat and fear in the air.
“What is happening?” Mimic asked, having returned to her human form.
“Night terror,” I answered, rushing to Gonzales’s side.
“Or PTSD,” Ciangi said as she joined me. “Don’t try to wake her. She could have her eyes open and talk to you, but still be in the episode. Also, she might lash out. Just try to make sure she doesn’t hit her head on anything.”
“I know.” Carefully, I pulled back the covers and slid a hand behind her twisting waist. I pulled her up gently, her fist pummeling me as I did, but I held her long enough for Ciangi to slide behind her.
“Boy, she really knows how to land a punch,” I gasped after a blow hit me square in my ribs.
“Oh, I don’t think she ever mentioned it, but Gonzales is super into kickboxing.” The blonde finally finished getting settled, and put a pillow against her stomach before tenderly pulling the other woman back down. Once the two women were flush, Ciangi carefully wrapped her arms around her friend and whispered quiet encouragements.
I followed suit, my hands encircling one of the wildly-flailing fists. At first, Gonzales tried to resist, but I just waited patiently until the arm went somewhat slack. Once I was sure it probably wasn’t going to beat me into a pulp, I released one of my hands and gently stroked at the skin of her arm as comfortingly as I could. Eventually, the fist relaxed and her fingers unclenched, allowing me to gently massage her palm.
“You seem to have experience with this,” Bahn remarked quietly from behind me.
“There was an accident at the colony when I was little. Explosion,” I murmured, never taking my eyes away from Gonzales’s pained face. “People survived, but were trapped with the mangled remains of the dead for several days until we could extract them. There was no water, food, and hardly any oxygen. Almost all of them had some sort of PTSD from it, so all of us learned how to take care of each other.”
“At least you all were there for each other,” Ciangi supplied helpfully.
“Our colony was small, and back then, on the very outskirts of civilization. We only had each other.”
“Like us,” Mimic said, almost too quietly to even hear.
But I did catch it, and I nodded. “Yeah, a lot like us.”
We went quiet for a while, the only sound in the room being the occasional thrash or yell from Gonzales. I liked to think that she could sense us there, trying to comfort her as best we could, and to make sure she was safe.
“I do not remember her doing this before,” Mimic whispered after a considerable time had passed. I appreciated that. Although she had no idea what was really going on, she understood that calm and quiet were required. “Did something happen?”
I let out a harsh breath since a snort might have startled Gonzales. “Yeah. You could say that.”
“I see.” I risked a glance over my shoulder to see my friend studying us quizzically, as if trying to put together an incredibly complex puzzle. “I feel like this is something I should never ask of, unless Gonzales tells me personally. Is that correct?”
I nodded. “Yeah, very good. It seems you haven’t forgotten how us humans work since we left.”
“No, not at all,” Her expression clouded slightly. “But after what has happened on Earth, I am beginning to fear that I understand how your kind operates too well.”
I almost wanted to object, to say that she had just seen the bad that humanity had to offer, but with each tremble of Gonzales’s sweat-drenched form, I couldn’t help but agree with her sentiment.
Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that I never belonged with my own kind. As of late, they were decidedly awful, and I believed that we could be better than that.
Two long hours, Gonzales was stuck in the throes of her nightmares. Except they weren’t really nightmares. The way it had been explained to me when I was younger was that the dreams that happened in one of these fits were hyper-realistic, so much so that it could be dangerous to lie beside someone who was suffering from one. I didn’t even want to imagine what Gonzales was seeing behind her closed lids, but I wished more than anything that I could end it.
When it did finally end, it was like someone had thrown a switch. One moment she was drawn as tight as an ancient Earth bow, whimpering words I couldn’t understand, the next she went as limp as a hot space ration and nearly sank into the bed. Ciangi and I exchanged surprised glances, but waited for her to open her eyes a few minutes later before saying anything.
“Um…hello?” she asked, her normally rich skin now drawn and pale. “What are all of you doing here? Slumber party I didn’t know about?”
“You were having a night terror.”
She sighed and reached a shaky hand up to wipe her drenched forehead. “Is that what that was?”
“Yeah,” I answered softly before looking to Bahn. “Can you go grab her a drink from the fabricator?”
He nodded and crossed to the living room area of the officer’s quarters. Ciangi wiggled out from behind the woman and sat down next to her.
“You had me worried there for a minute.”
“I worried myself,” she answered honestly. “Hey, so I’m, like, uncomfortably soaked right now. Would you mind grabbing me a spare jumpsuit from the supply area?”
“Sure. Be back in a bit.”
&n
bsp; The blonde woman gave me a nod then slid off the bed, disappearing out the still open door. Bahn returned a moment later, handing Gonzales a cup of cold liquid and a piece of bread.
She took them gratefully, but was smart enough not to swallow them down too quickly for her system to handle. It was as she nibbled at the bread that I found her eyes on me.
“You must think I’m weak,” she blurted, seeming to surprise herself as much as me.
My eyes went wide, and I could only stare at her in puzzlement. “Why on Earth would I think that?”
“We’re not on Earth anymore,” she mumbled, her eyes flicking away. “And because I let something as simple as a bad dream get everyone all riled up.”
“It wasn’t a dream,” I countered, feeling strangely defensive. “And you’re not weak. Sometimes the mind copes with trauma in really terrible ways. You’re still in recovery, so don’t feel bad about needing time to heal.”
“I…I’m glad you think so.” She sighed. “I feel like an idiot. You guys managed to not get captured until almost a month after me. If I hadn’t been so careless, I would have been able to get to you in time and warn you, instead of wasting all those weeks in our cells.”
“You were wise to the treachery a month before us. If anything, you were too smart for your own good.”
“Thank you. For saying that.” She laughed weakly and took a long sip of water. “I think I’m more tired than when I laid down.”
I reached over to ruffle her hair, which was damp and sticking to her scalp. “Just speaking the truth. If we were all more like you, maybe we wouldn’t have been duped so easily.”
“Nah. The universe just wouldn’t be right if there wasn’t a Higgens in it. One of me is plenty.”
I smiled at that, but when I went to pull my hand away from her head, she gripped it for a moment. Our fingers interlaced, and she leaned forward to rest against me.
“When we were captured…is what happened in there going to follow me forever?” she whispered, her weight warm and damp against me.
“In some ways, yeah. In some ways, no,” I answered honestly. I valued her far too much to try to sugarcoat things in any way. “But you’ll always have us around to help with it.”
“You know, I think you’re the only person I’ve ever believed means that when they say it.”
“And I always will.”
2
Five’s a Party, Six is a Surprise
Time passed surprisingly calmly considering that we were yet again fugitives on the run with a stolen vessel. I had often heard the phrase that history was doomed to repeat itself, but I had never seen it enacted in such alarming clarity.
And yet, I was pretty happy about everything. I was once more hurtling through space with my friends, readying ourselves for yet another adventure.
Okay, maybe adventure wasn’t the best way to put it. We were rushing to Mimic’s home to help prep her people from war. A war which was going to be against the same species that had enslaved her people for hundreds of years and kept them stunted. Eternal child soldiers and slaves, with no mind of their own and no sense of will.
I shuddered at the thought, wondering what the heck we were supposed to be able to do with a planet full of babies against a technologically advanced species that obviously didn’t have a problem with conquering natives and exploiting their biology.
“A credit for your thoughts?” Ciangi asked, pointing to the spot on the board where she wanted her holo-piece to move to.
I shook my head and returned to the game at hand. Of course, the woman was absolutely creaming me, but it was nice for us to have some one on one time. I couldn’t remember the last time that Ciangi and I had talked alone that wasn’t related to some sort of life-or-death situation. Considering she was one of my only four friends in life, I definitely wanted to rectify that.
“Just thinking about the juxtaposition between us sitting here, playing a board game, while we are on our way to wage a planetary scale war.”
“Oh, ‘juxtaposition.’ Is that from your word-a-day calendar?”
“No,” I objected automatically, before flushing. “…maybe.”
“You don’t have to be embarrassed about learning. In fact, you should be the opposite. A lot of people get to a certain point in life and they just figure, ‘this is it’ and settle. They stop progressing, stop fighting, and that’s when they start to rot.
“But you, you’ll never rot. You’re always hungry for more. Some people would argue that means that you’re never content, but being content is poison. One that seeps into your bones and taints everything until, the next thing you know, you’re too weak to ever escape it.”
The corner of my mouth went up. “That’s some pretty dramatic prose for word-a-day calendar.”
She laughed at that, shaking her head and making her curls bounce around her head like golden springs. “What can I say? The most recent turn of events has me feeling a little dramatic. You know, abandoning everything we had on Earth, traveling to our certain deaths and all.”
“I don’t know about certain…”
She reached over to pat my cheek. “And don’t you ever lose that optimism, Higgens. Someone around here has to see the bright side.”
Some might have considered that patronizing, but I just chuckled slightly. “I’ll do my best,” I answered before moving my own piece forward.
Ciangi drew in a regretful sort of breath, then pushed her emperor-token forward to take the game. I sighed, and pushed myself away from the table.
“I was never very good at Conquer anyway.”
“Eh, I didn’t think you did that bad. Up for a fifth round?”
“Ha, no, I don’t think so. I’m going to go check on Bahn and Gonzales. Last I knew, they were taking inventory in the weapons room.”
“I think so. Knowing those two, they’ll be working all night. We’ve got another four days of our flight, but by the way they act, you’d think it was tomorrow.”
“I’m pretty sure that being busy helps Gonzales with…things.”
“Ah, that makes sense. And what is your Mimic up to?”
“She’s not my Mimic,” I shot back. “And I think she’s gathering different things for her to, uh, ‘eat’.”
Ciangi nodded at that. “I remember her…eclectic diet. Sent us across several planets once. Well, go, check on all of our friends like the good mother that you are.”
I opened my mouth to argue, before I realized that the term was fairly apt considering the way that I worried after all of them. Shaking my head, I excused myself and headed out.
The peace we had on the ship was decidedly strange considering the hell that we had lived through. There was no guard to torment us, no bars keeping us trapped, no endless parade of questions wondering where Mimic was and if she would think we had betrayed her. I should have been grateful for it, but—if anything—it made me restless.
“Oh hey, what brings you in here?”
I looked to Gonzales, who had spotted me before I even entered the room. Unusual, as she normally would be too absorbed in her work to notice if a tornado itself was outside her door.
“Just checking in,” I answered, sticking my hands in my pocket so I wouldn’t touch anything I wasn’t supposed to. Although I had made a lot of progress towards my engineering degree, I was nowhere near the level of being able to mess with the dangerous chemicals and components that Gonzales and Bahn were. “How’s inventory and upgrading going?”
“Pretty good,” she answered, sending me a bright smile. “Not enough for an entire planet, but enough to give us at least a little bit of hope.”
“Hope is good.”
“Wh—”
Bahn’s question was cut off by a blaring alarm, nearly jolting me out of my skin. I stared at the two for a moment, the pair just as surprised as I was, before collecting myself enough to go over to one of the security displays on the side of the room.
“What does this mean?” I asked, pointing to the
blips and lines of code that I didn’t understand.
Gonzales came up beside me, worrying her lip between her teeth. “It means we have an intruder.”
“An intruder?” Bahn asked. “What do you mean an intruder?”
“What about that needs explaining?” she snapped. “Grab some weapons, boys. I don’t know what kind of stowaway we have, but let’s not take our chances, shall we?”
I stared at the solid door in front of us, marveling at its construction. I doubted that even all of our blasters firing at full power could melt even a single hole in it. The metal was sturdy, impossibly so, and I couldn’t see a way around it.
“You’re sure the intruder is in here?” I asked, nodding to the door.
“Yeah, that’s why this area is in lockdown,” Ciangi answered, the only one of us humans without a gun in hand. It seemed that, even after everything we had been through, she still didn’t like any sort of gun. “Whoever managed to get in here is just on the other side of this door.”
“I’m going to punch in the override now, but get ready. We don’t know what they’re capable of.”
“Ready,” I answered, bracing myself and pulling my weapon up.
“Ready,” Bahn agreed.
“Ciangi?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
Gonzales stepped forward and to the side, pulling out a panel from the wall and revealing an interface. Quickly, she punched several things in before the blaring finally stopped and the door slowly slid open.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting on the other side. Perhaps some sort of trained super soldier? An assassin that they had somehow known to send after us who had managed to get onto the ship before we lifted off? Either way, it certainly wasn’t a tall, lanky woman with dark, dark skin in a maintenance uniform.
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